The Bloody Mary that went viral

Many’s the time I’ve advocated that whatever you do now you can do a little bit better. This was one of Disney’s hallmarks where he would tell his team to “plus it” knowing the power to be greater was within their reach. 
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But you don’t have to be a creator of magical things to follow this example. One such local example is at a local eatery. As part of loving discovery, my wonderful wife and I try to venture out and sample new (to us) places on a regular basis. From miniature golf, shopping and food we love the world of discovery and so we plan visits to places we haven’t been before.

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My wife and I also spend more time on the social platforms than most people’s teenagers so when the bloody Mary showed up on the table it got the treatment usually reserved for a Hollywood celebrity with cameras blazing at the sight of this giant eyeful. 

I had already suspected that we were in for a treat when the server mentioned that there would be a delay in delivering the drink so the cook could make the bacon. Wait. What? 

Sure enough, this didn’t disappoint and soon there were more bloody Marys at the table as the drink was as good as it looked. 

But the picture started something. Posting it on Facebook was magical and the comments started almost immediately. “Where is this?” “Is it as good as it looks?” 

In a very short time it’s gone completely bonkers as other friends have now posted pictures of their bloody Marys from this place or sent me text messages with pictures. Wait a second - if it’s got a picture would it still be a text message? 

So by posting one picture of this incredible drink on Facebook I can specifically count almost a dozen of these that I’ve sold for the business. Not bad in a small community of people. And this demonstrates the power of striving to make something better - that wow factor and a tiny bit of publicity has resulted in many hundreds of dollars of business for this operation. 

But the sad part of this story is that this business has zero web presence. Their Yelp and Google listings go unclaimed, so there are no menus posted. The highlight pictures that others have posted are pretty generic. They claim to have a website but it won’t load on my computer. 

So in this tourism-based economy that we live in this business is like so many others in that it’s virtually invisible to tourists. At $8 per bloody Mary imagine how many tourists to the area would have their own bloody Mary photos if they knew this place existed? 

Furthermore, this last Saturday that same place had a really, really great local band. One of the locals knew about the band so I checked all the local calendars - nothing. 

When you think of the power of just one post on a closed environment (my personal Facebook feed) and how many items that post sold, imagine what would happen with a basic web presence for this business? Owning their Yelp and Google pages - posting a menu and making information available to the tourists who flock to the area. 
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There’s an old saying that says “build a better mousetrap and the world will be a path to your door” but I’m going to follow Disney’s “plus it” philosophy by adding, “as long as you can find the address.” Don’t be invisible, people, it’s not good for business.

Image and photo by Anthony B. Barthel